Lily Hindy
Biography
Lily Hindy is a PhD candidate in modern Middle East History at UCLA whose research focuses on human rights, migration, diaspora and nationalism in the 20th century. Her dissertation explores how the Kurdish nationalist movement in Iraq and in the diaspora utilized the growing bureaucracy of human rights to publicize their plight internationally and gain support for autonomy between the 1970s and 2003. She has carried out archival research and oral history interviews in Iraqi Kurdistan, Sweden, the U.K., France and the U.S., supported by grants from Fulbright-Hays, Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, the UCLA Center for Near East Studies and the American Research Institute in Turkey. Her recent work has been published in an edited volume on the Ba’thist archives and The Conversation. Before coming to UCLA, Lily was senior foreign policy associate at The Century Foundation focusing on the experiences of Syrians who fled during the war there, and she previously worked as a United Nations reporter and international desk editorial assistant at the Associated Press in New York. She also spent five years in the nonprofit sector where she held the position of Deputy Director at RISC (Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues), which provides emergency medical training to independent journalists working in conflict zones and remote areas. She has a Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a Bachelor’s in Government and Italian Language and Literature from Smith College.
Publications
- “Kurdish gains in Syria could disappear without international support − just as they did in Iraq decades ago,” The Conversation, March 12, 2026
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“Claiming Human Rights Violations in Iraq: Kurdish and Iraqi Ba’thist Attempts to Gain International Recognition in the 1990s,” in Ba‘thist Iraq through Archives: Reflections, Explorations, and Opportunities, edited by Lisa Blaydes and Samuel Helfont (Stanford University Press, 2026)
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Review of “Disturbing Spirits: Mental Illness, Trauma, and Treatment in Modern Syria and Lebanon,” by Beverly A. Tsacoyianis, H-Net, December 2022
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“Germany’s Syrian Refugee Experiment,” (revised & updated from 2018 publication), Syrian Studies Association Bulletin, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2021)
- “Skewed Recovery: Minority Assistance Programs to Iraq in Historical Perspective,” with Philip Hoffman and Monica Widmann, Luskin Center for History and Policy, June 2021
- “Germany’s Syrian Refugee Integration Experiment,” The Century Foundation, September 6, 2018
- “A ‘Nation in Pieces’: Views from Syrians in Exile,” with Sima Ghaddar, The Century Foundation, November 30, 2017
Awards & Grants
- Dissertation Year Award, UCLA Division of Graduate Education (2025-26)
- Mosafer Centennial Fund for Near Eastern Scholars Award, Fieldwork in Iraqi Kurdistan, UCLA Center for Near East Studies (2022, 2025)
- Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, England and Sweden (2024)
- American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) Summer Fellowship for Intensive Advanced Turkish Language, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul (2023)
- Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Summer Fellowship, Sorani Kurdish, UCLA Center for Near East Studies (2019, 2023)
- Silas Palmer Fellowship, Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University (2022)
- Graduate Summer Research Mentorship, UCLA (2021)
- Graduate Student Research Fellow, Luskin Center for History and Policy, UCLA (2019-21)
- FLAS Summer Fellowship, UCLA Center for Near East Studies, Advanced Turkish (2020)
Conference Presentations
- “Human Rights According to the Iraqi Ba’th Socialist Party,” The Academic Research Institute in Iraq Modern Iraq Convening, virtual, December 18, 2025
- “Stateless Diplomats: The Evolution of Kurdish Human Rights Activism in Iraq and the Diaspora in 1988,” First International Scientific Conference of President Jalal Talabani, University of Sulaimani, Iraq, October 3-4, 2025
- Panelist, “Alternative Sovereignties,” Middle East Studies Association Annual Conference, virtual, November 11-16, 2024
- “Using Human Rights to Gain International Standing: A Comparison of the Iraqi Ba’thist and Kurdish Nationalist Movement Archives,” UCLA Near East Languages & Cultures “After Antiquity” Graduate Colloquium, January 18, 2024
- “Comparing Iraqi Ba‘thist and Kurdish Nationalist Usage of Human Rights Language in the 1980s and 1990s,” Hoover Institution Library & Archives Iraqi History Conference “A Decade of Research Using Archives of Ba‘thist Iraq: What We Now Know,” Stanford University, August 17-18, 2023
- “ ‘Selling’ the Kurdish Plight to the U.S. of the 1980s and 1990s: The Messaging of the Kurdish National Congress of North America,” Kurdish Studies Conference, London School of Economics and Political Science, April 24-25, 2023
- Workshop on Authoritarianism and Democratic Breakdown, Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, July 5 – 15, 2022
